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"You take them because I have a world of them. And I will write to you and send you more, more so that you will never need to do anything but what you want to do-ride and hunt, and tell the tales of old times by the fire. Buy a fine harp with this, buy books if you will for the little ones, buy what you will. "
"I don't want this; I want you, my son. "
"Yes, and I want you, my Father, but this little power is all we may have. "
I took his head in both my hands, displaying my strength, perhaps unwisely, but making him stay still while I gave him my kisses, and then with one long warm embrace, I rose to go.
I was out of the room so fast, he couldn't have seen anything but the door swinging shut.
The snow was coming down. I saw my Master several yards away, and I went to meet him and together we started up the hill. I didn't want for my Father to come out. I wanted to get away as fast as I could.
I was about to ask that we take to vampire speed and get clear of Kiev when I saw that a figure was hurrying towards us. It was a small woman, her long heavy furs trailing in the wet snow. She had something bright in her arms.
I stood fixed, my Master waiting on me. It was my Mother who had come to see me. It was my Alother who was making her way to the tavern, and in her arms, facing me, was an ikon of the scowling Christ, the one I looked at so long through the chink in the wall of the house.
I drew in my breath. She lifted the ikon by either side and she presented it to me.
"Andrei," she whispered.
"Mother," I said. "Keep it for the little ones, please. " I embraced her and kissed her. How much older, how miserably older she seemed. But childbearing had done that to her, pulling the strength out of her, if only for babies to be buried in small plots in the ground. I thought of how many babies she had lost during my youth, and how many were still counted before I was born. She had called them her angels, her little babies, not big enough to live.
"Keep it," I said to her. "Keep it for the family here. "
"All right, Andrei," she said. She looked at me with pale, suffering eyes. I could see that she was dying. I understood suddenly that it wasn't mere age that worked on her, nor the hardship of children. She was diseased from within, and would soon truly die. I felt such a terror, looking at her, such a terror for the whole mortal world. It was just a tiresome, common and inevitable disease.
"Goodbye, darling angel," I said.
"And goodbye to you, my darling angel," she answered. "My heart and soul are happy that you are a proud Prince. But show me, do you make the Sign of the Cross in the right way?"
How desperate she sounded. She meant these words. She meant simply, Had I gotten all this apparent wealth by converting to the church of the West? That is what she meant.
"Mother, you put a simple test to me. " I made the Sign of the Cross for her, in our way, the Eastern Way, from right shoulder to left, and I smiled.
She nodded. Then she took something carefully from inside her heavy wool shift coat and she gave it to me, only releasing it when I had made a cradle for it with my hand. It was a dark ruby-red painted Easter egg.
Such a perfect and exquisitely decorated egg. It was banded with long lengthwise ribbons of yellow, and in a center created by them was painted a perfect rose or eight-pointed star.
I looked down at it and then I nodded to her.
I took out a handkerchief of fine Flemish linen and wrapped the egg in this, padding it over and over, and I slipped the little burden faithfully into the folds of my tunic beneath my jacket and cloak.
I bent over and kissed
her again on her soft dry cheek. "Mother," I said, "the Joy of All Sorrows, that is what you are to me!"
"My sweet Andrei," she answered. "Go with God if you must go. "
She looked at the ikon. She wanted me to see it. She turned the ikon around so that I could look at the gleaming golden Face of God, as waxen and fine as the day I'd painted it for her. Only I hadn't painted it for her. No, it was the very ikon which I had taken that day on our march into the wild lands.
Oh, what a marvel, that my Father had brought it back with him, all the way from the scene of such loss. And yet why not? Why not would such a man as he have done such a thing?
The snow fell onto the painted ikon. It fell on the stern Face of Our Savior, which had come ablaze under my racing brush as if by magic, a face which with its stern and smooth lips and slightly furrowed brow meant love. Christ, my Lord, could look even more stern peering out from the mosaics of San Marco. Christ, my Lord, could look as stern in many an old painting. But Christ, my Lord, in any manner and in any style, was full of unstinting love.
The snow came in flurries and seemed to melt when it touched His Face.
I feared for it, this fragile panel of wood, and this glistering lacquered image, meant to shine for all time. But she thought of this too, and she quickly shielded the ikon from the wetness of the melting snow with her cloak.
I never saw it again.
